Expatriates worry blasts will keep India in backwater

Julie Chao, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, May 14, 1998

1998-05-14 04:00:00 PDT INDIA; UNITED STATES; SAN FRANCISCO -- While Indians in India overwhelmingly support their government's five underground nuclear tests in the past three days, expatriates in the Bay Area expressed concern about the long-term repercussions.

Some said testing was a wise tactical move on India's part, but many were far more worried about its impact on relations with the United States.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's not going to serve any purpose, defense-wise," said Ved Prakash Vatuk, a retired professor of anthropology who lives in Berkeley.

"It doesn't make us any more secure. It doesn't make us any more powerful. It will simply open a Pandora's box."

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Although many Indians may not accept it, the United States is the superpower Third World nations must embrace if they want to advance, said Ramesh Murark, publisher of India West, a weekly paper based in San Leandro.

"As an Indian sitting outside India, I'm sad," he said.

"No country in this world has ever come up without the blessing of the United States - Japan, Germany, Korea, now China. By doing harm with the relationship with the U.S., I think they're jeopardizing something here."

Hasan Rahim, a San Jose software engineer from Bangladesh, is worried about about the ramifications for the people in India and neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"It's so depressing," "I don't know what they have to prove. It's going to engulf the whole region. It will take away from (spending on) food and clothing and shelter, and the whole subcontinent will suffer." said Rahim, who is also editor of Iqra, a quarterly magazine for the South Bay Islamic Association.

Of course, many Indians in the Bay Area share the enthusiasm of most in their homeland. Shalendra Sharma, professor of political science at University of San Francisco, said that more recent immigrants, those who arrived in the past 20 years, tended to view it as positive for India's security.

"I'm proud that they did it," said Aruna Venkidu, a San Jose immigration lawyer. "They've proven they have the technology, but they're not saying they're going to use it."

For Arvind Kumar, co-founder and editor of India Currents, a monthly magazine based in San Jose, it's not a matter of pride. That, he says, was achieved when India set off its first nuclear test in 1974.

To him, it's a matter of principle: India's strategy for the past 24 years has been to pressure the world's nuclear powers to disarm, but they have refused while ignoring India's security concerns, especially its tensions with China.

"I view it as a failure of the rest of the world, not India's failure," Kumar said.

He hoped the testing would come as a wake-up call to the world's nuclear powers: "If they would only address India's concerns, there could be a lot of cooperation," he said.

Those who disagree over whether India did the right thing criticized U.S. media coverage of Indian affairs.

"You hear very little of India's side of the story," Kumar said.

Vatuk, the retired professor, said: "When things are happening in India, when the government changes, they never pay any attention. Suddenly, we have front-page news everywhere."

That one-sided attention worries Vatuk and others because of fears India will be unfairly judged.

"I know some members of Congress are already labeling India as a rogue nation," said Debasish Mishra, executive editor of the India Abroad Center for Political Awareness, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group. "I hope India wouldn't get grouped with countries like Libya or Syria. It is a democracy after all." &lt;